A 19-year-old candidate in the 2021 UTME is in custody for tampering with his result, the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB) revealed Friday.

Spokesperson to JAMB, Fabian Benjamin, in a statement to newsmen, disclosed that the suspect claimed to have scored 380 in the examination conducted in June.

“After several enquiries, 265 kept appearing as his score as against the 380 score,” Mr Benjamin said.

According to the spokesperson, the suspect’s father, John Ifenkpam, had approached a court demanding N1 billion as damages to cover the emotional and physical trauma for offering separate scores.

The candidate claimed that between 2019 till 2021, his UTME scores had been altered by JAMB, which had denied him to study his desired course, medicine.

The statement further revealed that the suspect was invited by JAMB Registrar, Ishaq Oloyede, from Enugu state to Abuja.

“Initially, the boy was given a few minutes to come clean in a closed session with his father and lawyers about the results he was parading but insisted that his original score from the examination was 380.

“After going back and forth, the board tendered evidence to counter the claim by John and his legal representatives.

“At the Friday meeting, documentary evidence tendered by the board showed that John actually scored 265, not the 380 he had claimed,” the statement added.

The 19-year-old candidate is among the 11 candidates the board plans to prosecute for forging their UTME results.

“We have 11 of them who tampered with their results.

Two of them are already being prosecuted.

The remaining ones we are going to withdraw their results and prosecute them.

“The main purpose is to sanitise the system, including our own staff,” the Registrar was quoted as saying.

“There was never any communication of 380 with this boy. Because this boy has accused JAMB, we are going to withhold his result until the investigation is concluded.

“We are going to request that our interactions with him be subjected to the public.”

The candidate’s lawyer is said to be appealing for further attestation.